Taiwan-based mobile phone maker HTC is known to be the largest maker of Windows Mobile-based handsets, and it seems that the company plans on keeping its name. Since the next flavor of Microsoft's OS is under development at the moment, the handset vendor is also set to give a hand at delivering it to the market, and apparently, we might see the first Windows Mobile 7-based devices from HTC reaching the shelves sometimes in the second or the third quarter of the next year.

According to a recent article on WMPoweruser, which cites some posts from the xda.developers forum, HTC plans on launching the first mobile phones running under the next-gen Windows Mobile as soon as the first half of 2010, or the third quarter, the latest. It seems that the recently leaked Windows Mobile-based handsets from HTC, namely the HTC Trophy, HTC Tera and HTC Photon, are only those meant for T-Mobile, and that other phones will also arrive in the first half of the next year with WM on board.

There are two posts on the forum that specifically mention the upcoming mobile phones from HTC:
The second is more interesting, and states that HTC is planning to release a Windows Mobile 7 handset either in late Q2 or early Q3.

Anyway's…I have truly fresh news to share with you which absolutely make sense why in HTC’s portfolio there are no such WM7 phones…and just simple QWERTY or not, WM6.5 ones.
Microsoft, as many of you already know…moved back, the primal release of WM7 and chosen HTC as strategic vendor to launch the first HTC WM7 device late on Q2, start of Q3 2010 (September), so everything up to now, is under discussion and will be finalized till End of April of 2010.

These are quite exciting news, one should agree. HTC is very popular for its Windows Mobile-based handsets, and especially for some high-end devices like the Touch Pro2 or the HD2, both launched during the ongoing year, and it seems that it might bring even more appealing phones to the market. However, since nothing is finalized yet, and is not even official, we'll have to take this with a grain of salt for the moment, especially since the OS has been said to arrive towards the end of the next year, not sooner, but we are still keeping our fingers crossed for this to pan out.